Exodus weighs heavily in death toll: 107

EVACUATIONLessons come at high cost: 107 lives

A 2-year-old Houston girl crushed beneath the wheels of a pickup; a Sugar Land man and his two young children fatally pitched from their overturning car near Madisonville; a 92-year-old La Marque woman dead after losing consciousness while stuck in highway gridlock — Hurricane Rita's tales of sorrow rolled in as the death toll climbed.

A Chronicle survey of Houston-area counties and those along major evacuation routes to the north and west indicates that at least 107 people were killed by last week's hurricane or died in accidents or from health problems associated with the evacuation of 2.5 million people from their homes.

One day before the expected announcement of a state-county-city task force to examine the problems that plagued the exodus, which doubled or tripled the travel time between Houston and other Texas cities, Mayor Bill White conceded, "I don't think the evacuation should be a disaster in itself."

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, whose wife spent more than 12 hours in a U.S. 290 traffic jam, called for a careful review of the evacuation. "People are downplaying the fact that people died in the evacuation and that is not right," he said. "Is the chance of dying greater in the movement than in the storm? That's the question we need to consider."

Calls for improvement

At Wednesday's City Council meeting, Councilwoman
Shelley Sekula-Gibbs
, a Clear Lake dermatologist who spent 19 hours in evacuation traffic, called for the immediate opening of all highway lanes to outbound traffic in the event of a future evacuation.

"It was like we were yelling 'fire,' " she said of last week's evacuation, "but all the doors were shut."

White expressed concern at the state's slow response to city requests for assistance in traffic control and extra gasoline.

"They said they had a plan," he said. "They said they had a timetable."

But there was no plan for contraflow lanes, the mayor said. So, the city asked Gov. Rick Perry's staff in the middle of the night to get contraflow lanes working, and the effort got under way immediately after that.

Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said the state immediately responded to White's 6 a.m. Thursday request to open all Interstate 45 lanes to outbound traffic, but he admitted the effort could have been executed more efficiently. Hours elapsed as 700 troopers were brought in to close entrance ramps on the southbound lanes and other measures were taken to alter traffic flow.

Traffic on I-45 North already was gridlocked when they opened all lanes to northbound traffic. Interstate 10 was completely opened for outbound traffic several hours later.

The death toll for Hurricane Rita and the evacuation continued to climb Wednesday.

Preliminary death reports from law enforcement and medical examiners included 31 fatalities in Harris County, 23 in Dallas County, 10 each in Polk and Angelina counties, 12 in Montgomery County and three each in Fort Bend, Waller and Madison counties. Another dozen died in seven other counties.

Two cases questioned

In some cases, experts dispute the criteria used to link deaths to the storm. Though it generally was accepted that the storm could indirectly kill by triggering medical crises in the frail or elderly, at least two cases were questioned by
University of Texas Medical Branch
-Galveston ethicist Dr.
William Winslade
.

Winslade suggested the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office attributing the deaths of a 27-year-old schizophrenic found on a Houston street before the storm and the death of an infant who had suffered days of vomiting and diarrhea was a stretch. The Medical Examiner's office did not respond to a Chronicle inquiry about the deaths.

The deadliest single Rita-related incident came early Friday when 23 Bellaire nursing home patients were killed as a bus evacuating them to Arlington caught fire and exploded near Dallas. But the sorrow didn't stop there.

Two-year-old Angela Pérez of Houston was killed at 10 a.m. Friday when she was struck by an out-of-control pickup as her family rested on the side of U.S. 59 just south of Diboll in Angelina County. Diboll Police Chief Kent Havard said the 64-year-old driver of the truck apparently fell asleep at the wheel after spending more than 20 hours in evacuation traffic.

The driver was not charged in the accident, Havard said.

In Lufkin, Charlotte Ranger, 81, of Baytown, was struck and killed as she stepped from a chartered evacuation bus to enter a shelter, Lufkin police said.

Sugar Land resident Michael Alexander, 51, and his children, Omar, 11, and Amal, 8, were killed Sunday when their auto struck an I-45 median near Madisonville and overturned. The three, none of whom had worn seat belts, were ejected.

The family was returning from Arlington, where it had sought shelter from Rita.

Alexander's wife, Rima, was airlifted to a Temple hospital where she was in fair condition Wednesday. Another child, Dawlat, 12, escaped injury.

Law enforcement officers not prone to tears said they often wept openly as they dealt with the repercussions of the flight from Rita.

"It was horrible," said San Jacinto County Sheriff's spokesman J.J. Stitt.

Stitt helped provide a police escort for a charter bus filled with elderly residents from the Houston area en route to a local hospital. Earlier, the bus driver had made a 911 emergency call to authorities as his passengers sickened. By the time officers arrived, two were dead.

"Most of them arrived with effects of the heat — heat exhaustion and heat stroke," she said. Others came in with heart problems or blood clots in their legs from sitting too long. "We had people walking over from the freeway having babies."

La Marque resident Mary Lou Bourgeois, 92, became another Rita evacuation victim when she reluctantly joined her family fleeing via clogged I-10.

"She would never run," said her granddaughter Sheronda Bourgeois, 30. "She always said, 'If God is going to get you, he's going to get you.' "

After about 12 hours on the road Thursday — the family had gotten only as far as west Houston — the elderly woman began having difficulty breathing. She then lost consciousness. She died Friday at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital.

"We all have our self-doubt about evacuating," her granddaughter said. "No one wanted to die like those people in New Orleans and we thought we were doing the right thing by taking our grandmother with us. It's hurt the way she left us.

"We would rather her be at home, surrounded by her children and great-grandchildren."

An earlier online version of this story overstated the number of deaths due to Hurricane Rita by two. The tally already included the New Caney couple believed to victims of carbon monoxide poisoning from their generator.